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Should European housing politics be Americanized?

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Re: Should European housing politics be Americanized?

#11

Post by netsharc »

xienze wrote: post #5

Funny how everything worked pretty well, zoning restrictions and all, until public policy shifted towards papering over population decline with mass migration. An immigrant needs a house _today_, a baby needs their own separate housing unit in roughly 20 years. One approach towards population growth flattens the housing demand curve considerably, and it's not the one we're pursuing any longer. That's what's changed.

And in the boom times of the 60's/70's, European factories, construction, infrastructure builders, needed workers "today", not "in 20 years"...

Re: Should European housing politics be Americanized?

#12

Post by kazen44 »

paulddraper wrote: post #6
irdc wrote: post #2

The issues around zoning are not comparable. For one, here in the Netherlands we have plenty of density and not a lot of missing-middle, but still a giant shortage. The problem here was never zoning, it was a lack of building.

What causes the lack of building?

a combination of many things.

For one, Cities in the netherlands are already quite dense, and the dutch are focused on building family houses attachted to each other mostly (row housing).

Also, thanks to the massive agricultural sector and a lack of oversight on industry, the netherlands has a massive problem with nitrogen in its soil which prevents building because building stuff generates more nitrogen.

Speculation and the liberalisation of the housing market has also massively contributed to price increases.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrogen_crisis_in_the_Netherl...

Re: Should European housing politics be Americanized?

#13

Post by xienze »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #10
xienze wrote: post #5

Funny how everything worked pretty well, zoning restrictions and all, until public policy shifted towards papering over population decline with mass migration. An immigrant needs a house _today_, a baby needs their own separate housing unit in roughly 20 years. One approach towards population growth flattens the housing demand curve considerably, and it's not the one we're pursuing any longer. That's what's changed.

> until public policy shifted towards papering over population decline with mass migration Do you have a source showing price increases correlate with migration? (The article seems to show a timing relationship between zoning and prices.)

Yeah I do, it's called supply and demand. To have a growing population, every couple needs to have an average of 2.1 children.

Let's say a couple have two children. From t=0 until approximately t=20, all four people require one housing unit.

If that same couple does not have children (guess what's happening in every single western country!) and we instead lean on migration to increase the population for them, at t=0 you have at least 2, maybe 3 housing units required for the same number of people. It's not complicated.

Re: Should European housing politics be Americanized?

#14

Post by felooboolooomba »

> European policy debates often become Americanized because of the American domination of social media.

No it doesn't. And America doesn't dominate social media in Europe, except repeated administration scandals, paedofiles and history's largest pedo ring cover-up.

Re: Should European housing politics be Americanized?

#15

Post by ako »

paulddraper wrote: post #6
irdc wrote: post #2

The issues around zoning are not comparable. For one, here in the Netherlands we have plenty of density and not a lot of missing-middle, but still a giant shortage. The problem here was never zoning, it was a lack of building.

What causes the lack of building?

It’s expensive to build (many rules, not enough construction workers, expensive materials), expensive land, nitrogen policies, economic crisis 2008-2013 when there were no buyers for new houses caused a backlog of new houses.

Re: Should European housing politics be Americanized?

#16

Post by JumpCrisscross »

xienze wrote: post #13
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> until public policy shifted towards papering over population decline with mass migration Do you have a source showing price increases correlate with migration? (The article seems to show a timing relationship between zoning and prices.)

Yeah I do, it's called supply and demand. To have a growing population, every couple needs to have an average of 2.1 children. Let's say a couple have two children. From t=0 until approximately t=20, all four people require one housing unit. If that same couple does not have children (guess what's happening in every single western country!) and we instead lean on migration to increase the population for them, at t=0…

This is not how one attributes principal causation among multiple potential causes.

> at t=0 you have at least 2, maybe 3 housing units required for the same number of people

Plenty of families immigrate. And at least in America, immigrant households seem to be denser than native-born ones. You’re assuming immigrant households are smaller than average, which would indeed be surprising unless they’re all quite wealthy.

Re: Should European housing politics be Americanized?

#17

Post by yladiz »

Am I understanding that the solution proposed in the article is to allow more dense building in suburbs/outskirts of cities in Europe? This doesn't solve the actual problem that many European cities face, which is a housing shortage in the actual city center, where people want to live; there's generally not that much a lack of housing the further you get outside of a major city center in Europe, and people don't want to live outside of the city center because, well, they want to be in the city.

Re: Should European housing politics be Americanized?

#18

Post by cindyllm »

felooboolooomba wrote: post #14

> European policy debates often become Americanized because of the American domination of social media. No it doesn't. And America doesn't dominate social media in Europe, except repeated administration scandals, paedofiles and history's largest pedo ring cover-up.

[dead]

Re: Should European housing politics be Americanized?

#19

Post by xienze »

netsharc wrote: post #11
xienze wrote: post #5

Funny how everything worked pretty well, zoning restrictions and all, until public policy shifted towards papering over population decline with mass migration. An immigrant needs a house _today_, a baby needs their own separate housing unit in roughly 20 years. One approach towards population growth flattens the housing demand curve considerably, and it's not the one we're pursuing any longer. That's what's changed.

And in the boom times of the 60's/70's, European factories, construction, infrastructure builders, needed workers "today", not "in 20 years"...

Considerably less immigration was required for said workers because guess what, the requisite 2.1 children average per couple threshold was being met during those times.

Re: Should European housing politics be Americanized?

#20

Post by drnick1 »

felooboolooomba wrote: post #14

> European policy debates often become Americanized because of the American domination of social media. No it doesn't. And America doesn't dominate social media in Europe, except repeated administration scandals, paedofiles and history's largest pedo ring cover-up.

Lol, Europeans are quick to adopt all the worst things from America related to tech, including social media, streaming services, proprietary software, iPhones, and random IoT garbage.
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